US charges two Iranians with spying on regime dissidents and Jewish targets

Two Iranian-Americans have been charged with spying for Tehran after allegedly collecting information on Jewish institutions and attempting to penetrate a dissident group in the US.

MENA

2 min read

The New Arab & agencies

21 August, 2018

The two men were charged with acting as unregistered agents of the Iranian government [Getty]

Two Iranians who allegedly collected information on opponents of Tehran and took covert pictures of Jewish institutions in the United States were charged Monday with spying for the Iranian government.

The Justice Department unsealed charges against Iranian-US dual citizen Mohammadi Doostdar and Majid Ghorbani, an Iranian resident of California, alleging they worked together on surveillance of the Jewish sites and aimed to penetrate the Mujahedin-e Khalq (the People's Mujahedin of Iran or MEK), a group of Iranian dissidents in exile.

The two were arrested on 9 August but the charges were unsealed by a Washington court on Monday.

They said that Doostdar, 38, who resides in Iran, traveled to Chicago in July 2017 where agents watched him take pictures of Hillel Center and Rohr Chabad House, both Jewish community centres, near the University of Chicago.

The indictment did not explain why he took the pictures.

He then traveled to California where he met Ghorbani, apparently for the first time, according to the indictment.

Two months later Ghorbani, 59, flew to New York for one day where he allegedly attended an MEK rally and took photographs of people in attendance.


	The Rohr Chabad House in Chicago was one of the alleged spies' Jewish targets [Getty]

Then in December Doostdar allegedly traveled back to California to get the MEK information. In conversations between them recorded by the FBI, Ghorbani mentioned trying to "penetrate" the group, while Doostdar spoke of being directed by others to collect the information, the indictment said.

"I will give it to the guys to do their research," he said of the photographs.

The indictment says he paid $2,000 to Ghorbani in their meetings.

In March and April this year, Ghorbani went to Iran where, according to the indictment, he briefed government officials on his information on MEK and received a list of "taskings" for infiltrating the dissident group.

In May, Ghorbani attended the MEK-supported Iran Freedom Convention for Human Rights in Washington as part of the California delegation, where he allegedly took pictures of attendees, including while posing in front of the White House.

Doostdar and Ghorbani were both charged with acting as unregistered agents of the Iranian government and providing the Iran government with services in violation of sanctions.

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